


fire moves away

by zealotarchaeologist



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Dreamsharing, F/F, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Soul Bond, not quite angst but definitely yearning, spoilers for everything involving agnes or gertrude but not the main story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24495478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zealotarchaeologist/pseuds/zealotarchaeologist
Summary: The Desolation has always been rather fond of Gertrude.
Relationships: Agnes Montague/Gertrude Robinson, The Desolation/Gertrude Robinson
Comments: 14
Kudos: 38





	fire moves away

**Author's Note:**

> a gay-flavored exposition of some thoughts on how agnes was, and how the desolation is, and how those things are related.
> 
> [soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_-XCUqCHWU)

In 1976, she dreams of a young woman standing in her bedroom. Nothing else in her flat has been changed, it’s only the dark empty room and then…her. Her hair is long and coppery, and she stares at Gertrude as if it’s her dream that’s been invaded.

She knows immediately, of course, who it is. Gertrude has never laid eyes on the Desolation incarnate before, but she spent long months collecting rumors. Like pieces of a puzzle which she had so carefully fit together into a finished image.

The person standing before her does not resemble that image in the slightest. She is long in all ways, her hair, her height, her face, but there is nothing unnatural or intimidating to this. She does not tower, merely stands with a strange, willowy elegance. She looks—not at all scared, but a little startled. An almost animal stare. Unblinking.

“It’s you.” She says, incredulous. “But—you reek of the Watcher. Why on earth did you do it?”

Her instinct tells her that this is not the time to lie. Not that she could, being fixed with a look like that. Something about this woman’s wide grey eyes make her feel laid bare. Pinned on a rock before the unrelenting sun.

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” Gertrude admits. She’s not ashamed of it—frustrated, but not ashamed. There is no shame in not knowing something. What is important is that she has learned, and will do better in the future.

The woman laughs, and her room bursts into flames.

It’s a beautiful sound. Soft. Gentle. The flames lick up her curtains. Devour her books. They look liquid. It lights this woman with a golden glow.

“But that’s so funny,” she says, and her voice is distant. Lacking any amusement, sounding out the word _funny_ like she couldn’t possibly understand what it means. “They’re all worked into a frenzy over this, and you didn’t know what you were doing.”

“Explain to me, then.”

The flames reach the ceiling, consuming. The woman stands, gracefully, and approaches her bedside. The string between them goes slack at the closeness. It’s only then that Gertrude notices it, really, a slender red string that wraps itself around their fingers and sticks there. It’s so thin and gossamer, it shimmers and disappears in the heat. But now that she’s noticed it, she can’t stop feeling the tugging sensation. Pulling her towards--

“I’m Agnes Montague.” The woman says, the liquid flame spilling from her mouth. “And I expect we will be seeing each other again.”

Gertrude wakes up. There’s nothing seizing or strange about it, she simply opens her eyes to the dark and empty room. The air is cool on her skin, which feels slightly fevered. And she is alone.

In 1980, Agnes is older, more grown into her body. This is before her body will stop growing. They never really understand why. Maybe the thing she is becoming is simply anathema to the whole idea of growth.

But now Agnes is here, in dreams, and a little older. Her hair is even longer. She dresses the same, draping tunics and long pants that emphasize the graceful length of her body. This time they have found themselves in the clearing where, in a sense, they’d first met. It’s not so long ago. Gertrude remembers it well—the watching, swaying aspens that had encircled her then, the stone altar where she knelt. The way all the moisture in the air had drained dry and the soft grass had burnt as she had bound herself, both of them, inextricably. She has no doubt if she looked, she’d see the woven spell that then still hung there, ostensibly protecting them from any interlopers. It had been stupid of her. But how well it’s turned out.

“I thought we’d meet again sooner.” Gertrude says, by way of a greeting.

Agnes doesn’t mind her manner. “I thought so too.” She walks lightly around the clearing. She is not wearing shoes, and the ground burns wherever she touches. “I think I might have hoped so. My people are very angry with you. You’ve caused a lot of trouble for them.”

“Are you angry with me, Agnes?”

She stops moving. A smile, slow and very sad, creeps its way across her face. “No,” she says, “I don’t think I am.” As if this were new information to her. “That will only make them angrier, though.”

“Right.” She files that away for further use. The cultists of the Lightless Flame are, in her estimation, pathetic. But that sort of person is even more unpleasant when they are angry. “I suppose I should thank you for the warning.” The fire has been creeping its way slowly across the clearing, leaving Gertrude an untouched circle to stand in. Somehow, she doesn’t feel particularly grateful.

Agnes approaches her and she can see it now, the thin red strings between them, glittering in the unearthly light. This close, Gertrude needs to look up at her.

“May I touch you,” she asks, though she does not inflect it as a question. She raises her hand. Heat radiates from her in waves.

“It would be best if you didn’t.” Because she’s done her research now, and she knows exactly what Agnes Montague and her faithful are. “I’d rather not be moved to violence today.”

Agnes tilts her head, considering. As if looking at a strange animal. “Touch me, then. It’s your choice, but I think I would like you to.”

She shouldn’t. She knows exactly what will happen, so she shouldn’t. But as any good archivist, she is curious. Gertrude considers. She will spare the tips of her fingers for writing.

“Alright.” She says, and curls her hand into a fist. She reaches up, brushing her knuckles to Agnes’ cheek.

It burns. Of course it does. But it’s not the first time she’s been burned and it’s no worse than what the stove in her flat has done. It could be much worse, she knows, and she will puzzle over why it isn’t. She lingers there as long as she can bear it, then pulls away. Her knuckles are red and raw. They will hurt, and then they will go numb, and then they will hurt in earnest.

Agnes lifts her own hand in turn, to show the back of it. It’s milder, her skin a fainter red, but the burn marks on her knuckles are still clear. “You see. They won’t risk harming you. You’ve managed a great deal for someone who didn’t know what they were doing.”

When she steps back, Gertrude sees that her circle of safety has disappeared. She’s standing in the fire now, though it doesn’t seem to harm her. Around the edges of the clearing, plumes of flame are escaping into the trees. She knows, the way one knows things in dreams, that they don’t have long.

One question, then. What will get her the most information? About the ritual, maybe, and whether she’s at least succeeded in preventing it. About the other powers, and if she can somehow get an alliance out of this mess she’s made.

What she asks instead is: “How does it feel?”

Agnes looks at her hand as if seeing it for the first time. As if the flesh has only now become solid.

“It hurts.” She says, plainly, and then the fire consumes all.

Gertrude wakes up with a start, eyes open to her dark and empty flat. She is alone. These are the early hours of the morning, still, and what she can see of the sky and the city is dark. No fires lit anywhere.

The pain of her hand scraping against the bedsheets brings her back to herself. In the dark, the angry, mottled burn marks across her knuckles almost seem to glow.

In 1987, she dreams of Agnes standing tall outside the Institute. She looks the building up and down and does not seem impressed. In this dream, it is the only building. The street outside stretches on forever.

The dreams have come regularly since they started. Not always once a year, but nearly so. In most of these she sees Agnes only from behind, the back of her head wreathed in flame, a charcoal smear where her face should be. Less a woman and more a burning aspen. There is no conversation in these, only the barest knowledge of what she might be up to. They are deeply unsatisfying.

This sort of dream promises more.

“Got a light?” Gertrude says, because she so rarely has an opportunity to be charming these days. Agnes laughs a little, and it is a beautiful sound. She extends her hand to the tip of Gertrude’s cigarette, the red string between them going slack as they draw near. It lights easily. This close, the heat rolls off her in feverish waves.

“I had wondered when I would be seeing you.” She says, now lighting her own in turn. She doesn’t smoke it, just lets it hang between her fingers. Gertrude has no idea whether she smokes in real life. “How are you? Feel like you’re going to die in your sleep any time soon?”

“And make things easy for you?” Gertrude smirks. It’s rather a grim subject, but they are rather grim people. “I think not.”

Agnes doesn’t respond to that. Instead she casts her gaze up towards the Institute. Today she is wearing an oversized orange sweater over her long skirt, soft and warm. It complements her hair.

“So this is the stronghold of the Watcher,” she muses. “No offense meant, but it doesn’t look like much.”

“None taken. It shouldn’t.”

“I ought to burn it down. With you in it.”

“But that wouldn’t end well for you, would it.” Gertrude smiles a little, still pleased with the results of her past failure. Inhales a smoke that tastes all wrong.

“No.” Agnes sighs, the admission some kind of great burden. “Still, I ought to want to.”

“What _do_ you want, Agnes?”

She goes still. “Ask me again later. When you’re stronger.”

Gertrude’s stomach turns. She’s not stupid. She has felt the thing that’s been happening to her, ever so slowly over the years. It does not mean she welcomes it. “I’m no devotee of the Watcher, as you call it.”

“Aren’t you?” Agnes shakes her head, slowly. And the change in her demeanor is as instant as the sudden rise in temperature. The strange stillness of her voice is the same as it has always been, but there is something underneath it. A rage so fierce it burns clean. The hottest part of the flame gone blue. “You could have been anywhere, doing anything. Instead you’re here. Was that not your choice?”

She has no answer for that. She could say that, had she known all that would come to pass, she would never have stepped foot in the Magnus Institute. But, as always, it seems wrong to lie, here. It would disrupt the delicate peace between them. And there is no knowing what Agnes would do.

“Sometimes I think to envy you.” Agnes is saying. She drops her cigarette, and watches it fall impassively. Whatever came over her for a moment seems to have dissipated—but no, that’s not true. It is not gone. It has always been there, and always will be. It is simply somewhere much further away. “But I see these complications, and I do not envy you that.”

“We should have traded places.” Gertrude pauses, takes another drag. It’s not satisfying in the dream. “I would be more efficient if I had been born like you.”

They let it sit in silence. Agnes’ cigarette is smoldering, burning through the sidewalk like it’s kindling. So little time for them. But maybe she will get to see the building go up in flames after all.

“Til next year, then.” She says, a little wistfully. She has not lost all her sentimentality quite yet. “I imagine we will both miss the honesty.”

Agnes smiles. The sun rises, bright and horrible, over the Institute. “Til next year.” She agrees. In tender silence, they watch the brick and wood and paper all burn up as one, until the whole building comes crashing down.

In 1991, Agnes visits her at work again. Only this time the dream takes place inside her office. The Archive is not enough of a sanctum to deny their connection, it seems. It’s unusual. Even on the occasions they can speak, their conversation usually takes place in that clearing where they were bound.

“Thank you for having me.” Agnes says, looking around the room in a way that could be mistaken for wonder.

Gertrude thinks, almost defensively, that there is nothing much worth commenting on. She is organized, in her way. Was meticulously so before she realized what the Eye could accomplish with that. Now she deliberately makes a ruin of things, but she still keeps her own desk tidy. All three of the weapons she has concealed here are still in place, in this dream. Not that they would be of any help.

“Make yourself at home.” She says, as unaffected as she can manage. But even she cannot hope to match Agnes’ preternatural distance. “Would you like tea?”

Agnes thinks about it for a moment, really thinks about it. Considers it as a question of existential proportions. “Yes,” she finally says, “I think I would.” And, like a bird on a branch, she sits delicately on the edge of Gertrude’s desk.

The tea is already there, poured for both of them. Agnes pulls hers towards her but does not drink it. It begins to simmer in the cup.

“A café opened near my flat recently.” She says, seemingly apropos of nothing. As if they are two old friends catching up and she has no news to share more interesting than this. “Canyon Café.” She sounds it out slowly. The very sounds seem to please her mouth.

“Is it…nice?” Gertrude asks, not knowing what else to say. She is very good at her job, usually. Agnes unbalances her.

She shrugs, tucks a long strand of hair behind her ear. The strings connecting them wind tight around her wrist, around her arm. “It is extremely boring in every way. I go there every week. I order black coffee with room for milk.” She recites these phrases like a poem. No, like a poem in another language. Liking the sounds of the words but not knowing what they mean. Gertrude wishes, briefly, for her tape recorder. When she looks down, she finds that it is there, and already running.

Agnes’ tea is boiling over, spilling onto her desk. Ruining the statements. Ruining the wood. It creeps dangerously close to the recorder.

“You should come, sometime.” She says with a strange sort of finality. Both of them knowing that she won’t.

“Is that something you want?” Gertrude tries.

No response. Agnes sighs, quiet, subtle, and looks away. She casts her gaze over the room instead. Contemplating all the potential kindling. The papers seem to crisp up under her stare.

“It’s your fault.” She says, finally. “All this waiting. I have to stay occupied somehow.”

Gertrude sips her tea, ignoring the growing destruction of her desk. She won’t indulge something so petulant. “Has burning people grown dull, then?”

“More than you might imagine.”

“Your devoted never tire of it.”

“They are not what I am.” That flicker of rage again. It has grown familiar over the years, but no less chilling. “And neither are you. You’re getting older. It suits you. Do you think you’ll die soon?”

She has laugh at that. “I’m not that old.”

Agnes digs her hand into the wood of the desk. It turns to charcoal, crumbles at her touch. “You’re an anchor. Weighing me down, keeping me from my purpose.”

“Grounding you.” Gertrude counters. “Keeping you from getting lost.”

At that, the Archive bursts into flames around them, one great horrible snapping sound and then the heat, consuming. And Agnes says nothing, her fury trapped in the fragile human shell of her.

She turns and looks at Gertrude, more a stare than a glare, though she can feel the heat in it. Can feel the desire to burn, to hurt—not just her, but everything. To take and take of this place, of the world, until it is nothing but ash, and that, too, will be the Desolation. It is not some alien thing that invades her, it _is_ Agnes, and she trembles slightly with the force of it. The room burns brighter, as if doing so on her behalf. The paper goes up beautifully. And quickly.

It’s now or never. Gertrude braces herself. She doesn’t enjoy doing this. It is a tool like any other tool.

She calls on it in her eyes, in her throat, deep in her chest. On everything she doesn’t want to allow into herself. She will speak clearly, cleanly. She does not need any imperious voice or dramatics to be compelling. She needs only ask.

“What do you want, Agnes?”

The raw force of it makes her shudder, makes Agnes shake even worse. Her mouth is set, closed tight. She’s burning now, truly, little licks of flame erupting from her skin, melting it down, making it drip. Distorting her shape into something inhuman. An immune response, fighting off the invading power.

It’s not enough. The truth will tear itself out of her. The sight of it is unsettling, violent. And there’s no more time. Nothing left to them but fire.

“I don’t know.” She answers, truly. She bites down on her own lip, chews the wax from it. “I—”

Gertrude snaps awake, upright at her desk.

Everything is in its proper place, unburnt. Her tape recorder is running. Her tea is untouched. The old burn scars on her hand itch and pulse with remembered heat.

In 2006, Agnes is in her room again.

It was raining when she fell asleep, Gertrude remembers. The air had been cold and uncomfortably damp. Now it’s so hot and stifling in her flat she can hardly breathe.

She’s exhausted. She spends all her waking hours preparing for what she must do, and hasn’t been sleeping more than a few hours a night. She’s too old to be living like this, apocalypse be damned. But Agnes Montague is sitting on the edge of her bed, so she blinks and sits up.

Agnes does not acknowledge her motion. She stares at the floorboards, far away in thought. Her hair falls like a red curtain around her face.

“I envy your clarity.” She says, quiet, as if hoping not to disturb Gertrude at rest. “Maybe you doubted, once, but it was long before we ever met. By the first time I saw you, it had already been burnt out.”

It’s dark in her room, the lights off, the moon absent. Still, in the low light she can see all she needs to: the hundreds of strings stretching between them, digging into her skin.

“What’s going on, Agnes?”

“I am in need of your services as an Archivist.” She swings her legs back and forth over the edge of the bed, idly, letting her bare heels scrape the floor. A slow, subtle motion—but from Agnes, who is always so still, it betrays a new anxiety. “Tell me what you’ve learned of these rituals. Tell me what you know about the Scoured Earth.”

A cold feeling settles in her chest. Gertrude knows where this is going. She has always had an instinct for these things.

“It requires an inferno of unforeseen proportions.” She says, carefully. It gives her no pleasure. “Worse than what humans have been able to inflict on ourselves. And rather than conventional weaponry, one could use the raw power of the Desolation to accomplish this. That would be _your_ purpose.”

“If it succeeds, you will die violently, and it will begin from there. And if it fails, you will die violently, and a thousand years from now they will make another of you.” Agnes curls over further, deeper into herself. Even in the dark, Gertrude can see her shaking slightly. She has to be very cautious here, she understands, to keep her on this course without pushing too hard. “If they still remember how to do it. But I doubt they will.”

“And you wouldn’t tell me, of course, how to guarantee success.”

“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t.” If they were different people, this is when she might lay her hand on Agnes’ back, meaning to soothe her. Might hold her close, or kiss her, or otherwise convince her she is not alone. She has never really been that person, though, even among other humans. “I could tell you how you might put off failure. But I suspect you already know.”

Agnes says nothing for a long while. Gertrude doesn’t need—and has never tried—to invoke her power in order to guess at what she’s thinking. In the dark, she seems to give off a faint glow. Lit from within, a small flame burning in her chest.

Maybe, she considers, maybe it was always going to happen like this. After all, what could give the Desolation more satisfaction than years upon years of planning and sacrifice, ruined for nothing? For all that her notes are still fragments, Gertrude figures she understands that entity far better than its own cultists. They covet the blaze, but not the cold ash left behind.

Yet Agnes is all of it. The whole of it.

“They wanted guidance so badly they brought me into being. They want so many things. Love, and guidance, and power, and the world burned.” She says, suddenly, even her soft and sad voice jarring in the total quiet of the space. “You can’t possibly know how it feels to hold so much desire within you. I suppose that’s what incarnate means. It is not the way a human being desires.” She uncurls, her spine going eerily straight as she turns to look at Gertrude. That stare burns deep into her. And she can see it in Agnes’ eyes, an eternal vision of the earth gone scoured. Their grey color is an endless desert, a sea of ash. She sees herself for a moment as Agnes must see all people; flesh burnt from scorched-dry bones. She sees it. She feels it. The desire. “You want things of me, too. Yours are straightforward, but you want. As a human wants. A fire wants little. Only to eat, and so to live. It doesn’t even want to hurt. Doesn’t know the consequence of its eating. That is why we are not a fire, but the Lightless Flame.”

Then Agnes goes quiet again, suddenly, having burned through whatever was fueling her for a moment. She sighs and is still. But she does not look down, does not try to hide herself—only stares widely, resolutely forward, her direction chosen.

Whoever’s fault it is, Gertrude understands she has been afforded this moment for a reason. She has one chance to ask, and she must use it wisely. With sight beyond sight she can see the possibility at hand. If there was ever a time she could divert Agnes from her course, it is now. Her life, whatever it is, might be spared.

But the Lightless Flame will want their ritual, regardless. And there is no tool Gertrude would not use to stop it.

She lifts her hand carefully, and Agnes’ eyes go even wider at the motion. For a moment it seems that she might pull away, might start like a frightened animal. But then her gaze goes distant and she stills again, allowing Gertrude to ever so gently brush her knuckles once more to her cheek.

It hurts. “What do you want, Agnes?”

Agnes smiles in that sad, distant way she always has. Maybe it was always going to happen like this. Maybe some part of her has known it all along.

“I want,” she says, slowly, “For you to order a black coffee, and not drink it, and remember me.”

Gertrude wakes up. Alone once again, and forever more.

She can manage that task. It is so little to ask, and she can manage.

In 2006, Agnes Montague is found dead in her flat. Hanged herself, the police say, and it is not a surprise.

In 2007, Gertrude has been neglecting her sleep again. In her preparations to stop the ritual of the Flesh, she cares little for her body’s needs. But she plans to move against them very soon, and so tonight she does her best to rest.

And just like that, Agnes Montague is in her room again.

Only it isn’t Agnes, not really. Because Agnes is dead, and on the second glance, this thing is all wrong. The red strings are gone, long since severed. It does not look strange, and distant. It looks all too present. It moves towards her with too much certainty.

“How dare you,” She snaps, before it can presume to speak. This is why she _hates_ these things, all of them. “Coming here. Wearing her face.”

“It’s my face.” The thing says. “it’s always been my face.” And Gertrude knows, horribly, that it isn’t lying.

“Such violence in you.” It says, and Agnes never sounded like that. There’s a roar behind its voice, a crackling of wood, a vacuum of nothing. “Would that you were mine. So much keener than most of those petty cultists. A cruel man remaining cruel feeds me little. But you…” The burning sound deepens nearly to a purr as it draws near, leaning over her. Close enough to touch. Agnes was always careful with the space between them. “You’ve sacrificed so much, haven’t you? So many possibilities in your life, and you’ve thrown them all on the pyre. I should be thanking you.”

She deals with monsters every day, yet she's never before had such an urge to throw herself bodily at a creature and scratch its eyes out. She ignores the feeling, refuses to feed it, instead crossing her arms impassively over her chest. “Not often that I see you thankful for lives spared. But I’ll accept your gratitude.”

It shrugs, casually, that beautiful hair that used to belong to Agnes cascading over its shoulder. “But you enjoy it. The efficiency of your work. The looks on their faces as they realize everything they’ve planned for has come to nothing. This is what brings you pleasure, not the thought of lives spared.”

At a younger age, she might have been enflamed to argue. Now she smothers that defensive impulse. It is likely correct in its measure of her—it doesn’t matter. There is no point to considering its words. She’s known many of the Desolation’s followers, and they were all the same, even the clever ones. Bullies, petty tormentors. People who enjoy hurting for its own sake. Simply because they can. All but Agnes, though she might’ve been, too. She simply hadn’t settled on it. For all it disdains its own cultists, this thing is the same. She will not allow it to needle her.

Gertrude sets her spine straight, unblinking. She has no love for her employer, but the old motto has always served her well: she will listen, watch, and wait.

“What do you want, Desolation?”

It smiles. There’s no sadness, no distance in that smile. “For you to burn them all.”

And for the next few years she does as it bids.

Not for it, no, not an act of devotion. Not even as some sort of memento of dear Agnes. Gertrude has never acted for anything but her own purposes. But their goals, as they were, do align conveniently.

It is there with her, all this time.

When she pours petrol, it laughs beside her. When she stockpiles explosives, it grins over her shoulder. When she strikes a match its hand catches hers, burning, always burning, fingers brushing those old scars.

She never fully comes to understand how these things handle their territory, exactly, but she does know that if others weren’t vying for a piece of her she’d be in real trouble.

The others, though, are less communicative than the Desolation is. Less eager to provide for her. And Gertrude can use that, too.

In 2009, Gertrude is exhausted, deeper than she has ever been. Her fire has not gone out, rather it burns ever brighter at each fresh injury and betrayal, but she is tired. In a human way, she is tired.

So when sleep again does not bring respite, she is as bitter as she is immediately pragmatic, already considering how to best take advantage of this opportunity.

They are in a café. From inside the dream she can see no signs, but she’s sure as she has ever been of anything that this is the place Agnes spoke of all those years ago.

It is sitting there, wearing Agnes’ shape. Partly to torment her, she supposes, but from her observations it seems also to know no other. To have grown into the container it was forced into. A strangling plant, trained to vine. Perhaps to exist in the world as it is, it must fit itself into this, this…thing that is not at all Agnes Montague but is not the whole of Desolation either.

It didn’t order coffee, though, which is funny to her. Suddenly, horribly funny, and Gertrude suppresses her laugh as she slides into the booth across from it. It smiles its own smile, not understanding and knowing that she won’t explain. It is so pleased to have taken something from her. It is a thing that only understands taking.

“I wanted to express my gratitude,” it says, hastily. Too eager to begin, too hungry to take from her. “Such an excellent gift you sent me. So much potential, destroyed in an instant.”

“Yes, yes,” she snaps. “I know about Sarah. That’s why I—"

“Sarah?” It stares at her for a moment, a confusion so human-like it would be funny if it weren’t nauseating. “Oh, that. Also satisfying, to be sure. But I was thinking mostly of that nice boy of yours.”

Gertrude is not easily moved, after all these years. She’s seen just about everything there is to see of the myriad horrors of the world and the mundane human evil that weaves through them all. Not much surprises her, these days, or frightens her, or drives her to true anger.

This burns her. Burns at her, the guilt and anger scorching from the inside, and she tamps down on the urge to tell it to shut up the same way one might stifle a scream at having touched flame.

So it goes on, all the while watching her face with a barely-restrained pleasure that does not belong on Agnes’ face. “He had a good life ahead of him, or at least a chance at one. Not merely good but impressive. Effective. Like you.” This close, she can see the shimmer of heat at its mouth when it speaks. “Those are the best ones, you understand? Of course I prefer a death by fire, so painful…but what matters is that the _potential_ died screaming and afraid, wondering what could be so cruel as to allow this. He was worth something. The world is scarred by it.”

There’s a lot she could say. Could argue on the difference between pointless cruelty and a necessary sacrifice. But there’s no use in letting it get under her skin, letting it hurt her. It wants to hurt. It wants to take. That’s all that it is, and she won’t feed it any more than she needs to.

And she does need to.

She’s aware that usually the Desolation’s worshippers must offer to it, give not only victims but themselves to the flame. She understands, better than they do, that usually those things are one and the same. That their sacrifice is not just the body but the whole human life they could have had. In comparison, she has little to give, and maybe that’s a part of what’s kept her under her own control all these years. Gertrude could never truly belong to it because there is no possibility in her to sacrifice. She is only what she is, and she has been that for many decades now. If there was a time, it was forty years ago. It was when they first met. Even all her necessary sacrifices are just steps on a path she had long since set on.

But there’s a line she hasn’t crossed yet. Maybe when it’s done she truly won’t be human anymore. In the moment, she finds it hard to care.

“You owe me, then.” She says, as steady as she can manage. “Isn’t that how these things usually go?”

It leans forward across the table, crackling eager for a meal. “What, are you tired of your age? Rather be something more malleable?”

Gertrude wishes for a cigarette. She’ll take the habit to her grave.

“I need someone killed.”

“Another of your sacrifices?”

She glares, though that only seems to make it glow brighter. It’s really going to make her say it. “Yes and no. She does more harm in the world than good. She’ll get in the way of my work.”

The Desolation says nothing. It does remind her a little of Agnes then, much as it troubles her to admit it. The way she would stare. The sense that the real her, the whole of her, was somewhere far away. Would she have approved of this? It doesn’t matter now. Agnes is dead and no one will ever know what she truly felt about anything. All that’s left of her is this stray ember.

Best to get it over with, then. “And I want her to die.” Gertrude admits. “I am angry with her, and I want her to die, and I want it to hurt. Surely you can manage that.”

She had expected she would feel different, setting that final offering on the pyre. But she doesn’t. If anything, she feels less than she has when at least killing people for a cause. There’s no triumphant moment, no exaltation at her descent into the truly monstrous. Gertrude remains, for better or worse, as human as she has always been.

“Oh,” it sighs, and takes her hand. Fingers that are not Agnes’ fingers, running over her worn knuckles. Her bare, human flesh sears again, and she doesn’t much mind. “That’s all you needed to say.”

Gertrude indulges its touch a moment longer. It hurts, of course, but in a way that is so raw as to be somehow gratifying. Maybe it’s the loss of her assistants that makes her more keenly aware of her isolation. She doesn’t regret it, but she does feel it. Contrary to what many have said, she is not without feeling.

Only a moment, though. Then she sighs and withdraws her stinging hand, leaning back in the booth. “Just this once.” She cautions, fixing the thing with a glare that would wither a human. “Enjoy yourself while you can. This will never happen again.”

It’s not a lie. She will never ask it—or any power—to do such a thing on her behalf again. But it’s a transparent fiction to pretend the gifts between them are so clearly separated. Knowing this, the Desolation smiles. She will not miss its company.

When Gertrude wakes alone, she feels—not better, but invigorated somehow. Her fire burning a little brighter. As if she were a few years younger. It unsettles her, sure, but there are plenty of things that unsettle her worse. So Gertrude rises, wraps her burnt hand, and goes about her day. She doesn’t need to pursue any news about Emma. What’s done is done, and it is enough for her to know that it is done.

On the way to work, the mood strikes her. No one left to be troubled by her lateness, now, so she ducks into a coffee shop, the first she sees. She orders for two and sits by a window. Places the other cup away from her and watches the steam shift and curl and dissipate into the air.

No ghost comes to join her, of course. Even in her line of work, she’s given little thought to what happens to the dead. The majority of them are simply gone, and better off for it. She’ll be joining them sooner rather than later, though she plans to do as much damage as she can on the way out, and maybe it’s that knowledge that makes her oddly nostalgic. She does not need anyone to confide in, but at times she does miss it. The honesty. The company.

While she’s been musing, the coffee has started to cool.

“Til next time.” Gertrude says aloud to no one. And she goes to work.


End file.
